Alien Species.vp - IUCN

Familiarity
Familiarity breeds acceptance. People like what they know. Alien invaders often occupy
humanised landscapes and over time, if they are not too troublesome, become culturally
significant, winning acceptance as native species, by traditional and modern cultures. English
colonists brought house sparrows (Passer domesticus) and rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) to
Australia and New Zealand to Anglicise the landscape, even though neither is genuinely native
to England. Weeds are often adopted by rural communities as medicinal herbs, and sometimes
they are spread because of this.
Attempts to control alien invaders are often resisted by those who benefit from them.
Australian Aborigines now eat rabbits and Hawaiians hunt pigs and neither wants them
controlled. Feral horses are often valued. Gardeners want to keep growing familiar garden
plants even when told they cause problems. Bans on familiar but popular products because of
pest threats are resented.
Mechanistic thinking
Our perceptions of wild animals and plants are shaped by our familiarity with farm animals and
crops and with pets and garden plants. They are also influenced by the power we wield over
objects, especially machines and other products we own. Plants and animals are often seen as
products. Garden plants sell in supermarkets alongside foods and detergents. Under all of these
circumstances, plants and animals appear to be more controllable than they really are. As
Suzuki (1988) says: “We groom the planet in our image and see this as an indication that we are
in control”.
In fact, food plants are more likely to become weeds than other plants (Williamson, 1994).
Low (1999) observed: “Plants sold in nurseries are not colourful products invented to brighten
people’s lives, they are highly evolved organisms programmed to thrive in the wild. Just
because they are immobile and unthinking does not make them benign.”
Even biologists underestimate invasive species. Diseases sometimes escape from ‘secure’
laboratories. It seems scarcely credible that fig wasps, 2–3mm long and living for only 2–3
days, could blow 2,000 kilometres from Australia to New Zealand, where they now pollinate
cultivated Australian fig trees, which are now setting seed and becoming weeds (Gardner and
Early, 1996).
Political developments
The major political trend in the world today is towards globalisation, defined by the
International Monetary Fund as “the growing economic interdependence of countries
worldwide through the increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions in goods and
services and of international capital flows, and also through the more rapid and widespread
diffusion of technology” (Jones, 1999). Trade in the past was hampered by trade barriers, which
acted as ecological barriers by inhibiting spread of alien species. Globalisation is the ultimate
celebration of movement.
By encouraging movement of products, globalisation encourages movement of alien
species, since our quarantine systems – designed to intercept pests – cannot cope with everincreasing
volumes of trade. Quarantine inspections, done properly, are time consuming and
expensive. The goal of globalisation is to move products quickly and cheaply. Quarantine
inspections are the responsibility of government, yet globalisation, and the trend towards
smaller pro-business governments, and the policies of the World Trade Organisation,
undermine government capacity to apply quarantine effectively.
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Human dimensions of invasive alien species